Can Transparency Foster More Understanding and Compliant Citizens?

• Author: Erica Ceka,Gregory A. Porumbescu,Meghan I. H. Lindeman,Maria Cucciniello
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12790
• Published date: 01 November 2017
• Date: 01 November 2017

840 Public Administration Review • November | December 2017

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 77, Iss. 6, pp. 840–850. © 2017 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12790.

Erica Ceka is a PhD candidate in the

Department of Public Administration at

Northern Illinois University.

E-mail: eceka1@niu.edu

Meghan I. H. Lindeman is a PhD

candidate in the Department of Psychology

at Northern Illinois University.

E-mail: meg.huntoon@gmail.com

Gregory A. Porumbescu is assistant

professor in the School of Public Affairs

and Administration at Rutgers University–

Newark. His research focuses on public

sector transparency, e-government, and

citizen perceptions of government. His

work has appeared in journals such as

Public Administration Review,

Journal

of Public Administration Research and

Theory,

and

American Review of Public

Administration.

E-mail: greg.porumbescu@rutgers.edu

Abstract : Voluntary policy compliance is an important yet rarely studied topic in public administration. To address

the paucity of research, this article proposes and empirically tests a conceptual framework that ties policy transparency

and policy understanding to voluntary policy compliance intentions. The reasoning is that the extent to which citizens

understand a policy contributes to their intentions to comply with that policy. Further, the authors argue that policy

transparency indirectly influences voluntary policy compliance intentions through a positive effect on citizens’ levels of

policy understanding. To enhance the validity of the findings, the authors assess these relationships across two policy

domains. The findings reflect an indirect positive effect of transparency on voluntary compliance occurring through

policy understanding. However, this emerged only for one policy domain. These results suggest that the effects of policy

transparency on policy understanding and voluntary policy compliance intentions may depend on the policy domain.

Practitioner Points

• Policy transparency can be used as a tool to enhance citizens’ intentions to comply with public policy, but

this effect differs by policy area.

• The effect of policy transparency on intentions to voluntarily comply with a policy depends on the way the

information is presented.

• Policy information that is easier to understand leads to greater policy understanding, which, in turn, is

associated with a greater willingness to comply.

• This relationship holds for policy areas dealing with routine trade-offs (e.g., quality-of-life issues) but not for

areas dealing with taboo trade-offs (e.g., safety and security issues).

E xplanations of voluntary policy compliance

often assume that citizens are more willing to

comply with a policy when they understand the

benefits of doing so either for themselves or for their

community (Bullock and Rodgers 1976 ; Li, Zhang,

and Sarathy 2010 ; Murphy 2002 ). Given this rational

orientation, many note the potential of transparency

to foster greater voluntary compliance because it can

communicate to citizens, in objective terms, how

compliance with government policies will benefit

them and those around them (Kim 2005 ; Porumbescu

2015a ). Therefore, at a conceptual level, transparency

appears to be well suited to the task of improving

citizens’ understanding of policy benefits and, in turn,

bolstering policy compliance.

Despite discussions of the potential of transparency to

bolster voluntary policy compliance, there have been

few empirical assessments of two key assumptions

that undergird this ostensibly intuitive relationship.

The first untested assumption is that greater

transparency contributes to a better understanding

of public policies (Etzioni 2010 ). Although there is

a rapidly growing body of empirical literature that

attempts to gauge the effects of transparency, almost

none of this research sheds light on the conditions

under which exposure to information about a policy

actually translates into greater policy understanding.

The second untested assumption is that an improved

understanding of public policies will shape citizens’

behaviors, such as voluntary policy compliance (Cook,

Jacobs, and Kim 2010 ). Cumulatively, this lack of

evidence is problematic because it hinders theory

building and speaks to the persistence of fundamental

gaps in our understanding of the implications

of transparency and the determinants of policy

compliance.

Acknowledging these important gaps in transparency

and compliance research, the objective of this

article is to examine how government transparency

shapes citizens’ voluntary policy compliance. As we

will explain in greater detail later, voluntary policy

compliance can be understood as citizens’ willingness

to comply with a government request related to a

particular policy. In addressing our research objective,

Gregory A. Porumbescu

Rutgers University–Newark

Meghan I. H. Lindeman

Erica Ceka

Northern Illinois University

Maria Cucciniello

Bocconi University, Italy

Can Transparency Foster More Understanding

and Compliant Citizens?

Maria Cucciniello is assistant professor

in the Department of Policy Analysis

and Public Management at Bocconi

University in Milan, Italy. She holds a PhD

in management from the University of

Edinburgh, United Kingdom. Her research

focuses on transparency in government,

innovation in the public and health care

sectors, coproduction of public services, and

the impact of technology on the public and

health care sectors.

E-mail: maria.cucciniello@unibocconi.it